Featured Dealerships & OEM Catalytic Converter Shortages

It was a difficult day... Turns out a Toyota dealership in Seattle is addressing the supply shortage of cats by welding up their own (or so they claim) with non OEM cats and the wrong resonator!

"A resonators’ sole purpose in life is to change a vehicle’s engine noise before it reaches the muffler for a final decibel reduction." source: What Is A Resonator and Why Should You Care? | The Drive

Below is the invoice about the welding (upper right corner), two others images about using non-OEM Toyota cats that are not allowed in some CARB states.

Guess desperate times call for desperate measures, but look at the photo below of the exhaust pipe between muffler and resonator, it's more than an inch lower than anything else! Also it lost it's rear right underbelly panel during this repair.

But maddening part is a resonator is all about acoustics and when I put a cat cover on this car today the car came back right away with a distressed owner about it being in worse condition now. First time in years!

Turns out if you make a turn in the car at low throttle while accelerating uphill the cat cover's front center mounts rattle at the same frequency as the wrong resonator and create a very loud rattle that goes away if you accelerate.

But if you're cautious, like this particular Prius driver, and take your foot off the gas as soon as you hear the noise, a great deal of distress ensues. Same with me in the passenger seat... So tonight we went over all the possible sources of the noise as well as driving around alot with masks on. Solution was removing the cat shield.

Meanwhile an unfulfilled customer will be contacting this particular Toyota dealership about their previous suspicions that their Prius was not repaired correctly and that their sense of a lack of power and engine not sounding right are valid.

If you have any advice or insight into any of this for her, please comment! I'm gonna try to get some rest from the stress! I suggested filing a Better Business Bureau complaint...

 

I met this person on Nextdoor.com and they wanted me to install a cat shield... Simple as that. But the day was anything but simple and had to remove the shield because the wrong exhaust resonator was was amplified by the shield rattling in certain driving conditions.

 

She didn't say what Toyota Stealership in Seattle she towed it too... I'll ask yet again if I have the chance. At same time someone with a 14 year old Prius that isn't being maintained properly and has collision damage is not the kind of car you want to work on when the owner is super uptight about little noises her beat up old car makes. Once this fiasco was over she texted me about hearing another noise, like something rolling around in the back of the car, implying that it was something I've done even though her rear bumper was smashed in and she never got it repaired and her car was full of clutter and nasty. Geez! Some people! I'll avoid working for her in the future that's for sure!

 

yes, but most car owners are so ill-informed about car repairs, let alone how to research affordability that they get hosed. I mean paying $2K for an aftermarket system that damaged engine performance / MPG. That should be a crime, but as always without stronger consumer protections laws, they'll keep robbing people without consequence.

 

Awesome, thanks so much for digging up the details... That adds much clarity to the decisions they're making about the waiting list for out of stock cats.